Why Creating Online Still Feels Like a Job

The creator economy sold us a dream: Be your own boss. But if that were true, why does posting online still feel like clocking in for a shift?

At some point, I bought into the independent creator myth—until I started noticing patterns. The algorithm gives you just enough visibility to keep you hooked but never enough to break free. Like a corporate job with no salary, only “exposure” and the occasional dopamine payout.

The truth? 

The internet runs on a landlord model:

• Creators lease visibility from algorithms.
• Engagement is borrowed—one bad post, and your reach tanks.
• Monetization? A revenue split you never negotiated.

This isn’t creator-led entrepreneurship. It’s digital sharecropping.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re working for social media instead of on it, you’re not crazy. The system was designed that way.

Let’s break this down. Expose the Cheesecakes out of it. Figure out why so many creators are unknowingly just employees of social media.

Buckle up. This is going to get weird.

The Platform’s Playbook: How Dependency is Engineered

Imagine you’re a new creator, fresh-faced and full of ideas. You post your first piece of content—boom, engagement. You get a little dopamine hit. So, you post more. More likes. More comments. You’re on your way!

Then, you craft a thoughtful, deep-dive post. Something you know is valuable. And… crickets.

Your heart sinks. You refresh. Nothing. Panic mode.

So, you go back to what worked—short, snappy, engagement-bait content. And guess what? The algorithm rewards you. More reach. More followers. More validation.

Welcome to the digital factory.

Social platforms need infinite content supply. To ensure that, they optimize for speed and volume over depth and sustainability. Thoughtful creators struggle. High-output creators thrive. It’s not a meritocracy—it’s an attention casino.

The follower count? The blue check? The revenue splits? They’re not rewards. They’re incentives for dependency.

Now, ask yourself: How many of your followers would actually pay you a dollar?

I stepped away from social media for two years. When I came back, I saw it clearly: engagement traps, dopamine loops, and rev-sharing mirages weren’t side effects.

They were the business model.

Which raises the question… can you ever truly own your audience?

This is where we get the 6th hidden law of Creator Economy: The Algorithm Dependency trap

There are 9 more such laws, if you want to understand the hidden intricate movement of the creator economy, read the full deep dive: The Hidden Curriculum of Creator Economy

Virality vs Vitality: The Hidden Trap of Platform-Dependent Creators

Right now, everyone is posting Studio Ghibli AI stills. Last month, it was hustle culture slideshows. Before that, AI-generated headshots.

Creators chase trends. Platforms decide trends.

Social media rewards viral content—not valuable content. And that’s the trap.

Sure, you could argue “the algorithm is just human behavior.” But if that’s true, then why do we see sudden waves of personal brand experts, course sellers, and monetization coaches—repeating the same advice?

Where’s the originality? The diversity?

The answer: Creators aren’t leading. They’re training the algorithm.

Every post feeds data into the social media business model, helping platforms refine what they want to promote—not what benefits you.

Take Twitter Subscriptions vs. Email Lists.

When Twitter launched Subscriptions, creators who didn’t opt in suddenly saw lower reach, less engagement, and weaker monetization.

Coincidence? Or a platform-designed nudge?

Meanwhile, email lists exploded. Unlike social media platforms, your email list is a knowledge-based business asset that can’t be throttled, shadowbanned, or deprioritized.

This is the creator economy’s wake-up call. If platforms own the waves, you need to own the ship.

How Platforms Engineer Creator Dependency: A Psychological Breakdown

The creator economy was supposed to be the great equalizer—freedom from bosses, passive income, audience ownership.

Instead? Creators are more dependent than ever.

Why? Because social media platforms don’t just attract creators. They trap them.

And it’s by design.

Let’s break it down with a flowchart and a psychological deep dive.

🚨 The Platform Dependency Engine 🚨

🔹 Step 1: The Hook (Variable Rewards & Dopamine Loops)

• Platforms dangle virality like a casino jackpot.
• “One viral post could change your life.” (🧠 Operant Conditioning—same tactic used in gambling.)
• Random dopamine spikes train creators to keep posting, hoping for another high.

🔹 Step 2: The Training (Algorithm Conditioning & Learned Helplessness)

• You learn what gets rewarded—trends, engagement bait, platform-preferred formats.
• But you don’t control what works, the algorithm does.
• The result? You adjust your content to please the machine, not your audience.

🔹 Step 3: The Lock-In (The Switching Cost Effect & Digital Sharecropping)

• You can’t take your audience with you. Platforms own the reach.
• Moving to another platform? You start from scratch.
• Like sharecroppers in the digital age, creators work the land, but never own it.

🔹 Step 4: The Monetization Mirage (The Endowment Effect & Sunk Cost Fallacy)

• Platforms introduce monetization features (subscriptions, bonuses, ad rev share)
• Creators feel invested. “I’ve built my audience here. Why leave?”
• But payouts are unstable, rules change, and creators have zero leverage.

🔹 Step 5: The Burnout & Realization (The Scarcity Trap & Decision Fatigue)

• Constant posting. Algorithm anxiety. Declining reach.
• Creators burn out trying to keep up.
• Some finally wake up and shift to owning Intellectual Assets (IAs).

If you don’t escape the early, you’ll definitely trap yourself in the content hamster wheel, which, trust me, is not a good place to be in because that leads to Digital Sharecropping.

Digital Sharecropping: Creators as Platform Employees

Digital sharecropping is a very bad deal—like mixing peanut butter with squid. It sounds like a win, but it’s just… wrong. Stick with me.

This term—“digital sharecropping”—was coined by Nicholas Carr back in the Web 2.0 days. He noticed something alarming:

Sound familiar? That’s because this is the exact model of every social media platform today.

Sound familiar? It should.

Today, every post, every video, every viral tweet—they all make the platform more valuable, not you.

🚨 Example: YouTube made $40 billion in ad revenue in 2023. How much of that went to creators? Around 55%—but only if you met their ever-changing monetization rules. (Source: Alphabet Earnings Report, 2023) and Google Support.

In the old days, sharecropping meant farmers worked land they didn’t own. If the landowner changed the rules or took the land away? Game over.

Today, content creators do the labor, but the platforms own the land (reach, distribution, monetization).

And what happens when the land goes bad (algorithm changes, demonetization, platform shutdowns)?

🚨 You’re out. No severance. No safety net. 🚨

Creators today operate like gig workers—paid in unpredictable, engagement-based incentives instead of real economic security.

Think about it:

• No labor protections
• No guaranteed income
• No benefits
• And worst of all? You don’t own what you build.

The paycheck? A vanity metric—likes, views, retweets—your digital “employee of the month” award.

This isn’t a creator economy. It’s an unpaid internship with occasional exposure checks.

And that realization makes one thing crystal clear:
Escaping digital sharecropping isn’t optional—it’s survival.

The Algorithm as Your Manager: Are You an Employee of Social Media?

If you feel an unexplainable urge to post, even when you have nothing meaningful to say—congrats. You’re not in control. The algorithm is.

And yet, people still wonder why creating online feels like a job.

🔹 Shadowbanning? A silent layoff.
🔹 Engagement throttling? A demotion.
🔹 Content suppression? You just got fired—without severance.

Welcome to algorithmic control—where content creators operate under digital sharecropping, endlessly working for platforms that own their content and data.

The AI-Human Tug-of-War

AI is flooding the market with automated content, while real creators struggle with platform dependency and creator economy monetization myths.

📉 Less reach. More effort. No stability.

🚨 The hard truth? The algorithm doesn’t just sort content—it manages you like a corporate boss.

If your mood, income, and opportunities are algorithm-dependent… who really owns your work?

The Inevitable Reckoning: What Happens When Creators Revolt?

I’m starting to notice something strange—top creators are slowly abandoning social media platforms.

Not deleting accounts. No dramatic exit posts. Just… moving.

Moving where?
➡️ Email lists (algorithm-proof, direct audience access)
➡️ Memberships & private communities (zero engagement throttling)
➡️ Self-hosted platforms (where they own both the content AND revenue)

It’s a creator exodus, a shift from platform-driven influence to product-driven influence.

And it raises the real question:
🚨 What happens when creators stop playing the game?

The Myth of the Self-Made Creator

Spoiler: Nobody “makes it” by just playing the algorithm.

🔹 Ali Abdaal? Built a massive email list, published a book.
🔹 MrBeast? Turned YouTube fame into an empire of products.
🔹 Ben Thompson? Monetized through a subscription media model.

The real game isn’t content—it’s leverage.

Some creators scale their brands into companies. Others become investors, acquire media properties, or build VC-backed startups.

Social platforms want creators to stay dependent. But the ones who escape?
They build Intellectual Assets, not just content.

TL;DR:
The creator economy isn’t about content creation anymore. It’s about owning your audience, building durable assets, and escaping algorithmic control.

And we’re about to see a LOT more of that.

The Exit Strategy? Or Just a New Dependency Cycle?

So, after all this, is there really a way out? Or are we just swapping one dependency for another—trading platform reliance for tech infrastructure reliance?

Sure, newsletters, websites, and private communities sound like freedom. But let’s be real:

• AWS owns the servers running your site.
• Google controls your search traffic.
• Stripe or PayPal take a cut of your earnings
• Email deliverability? Also at the mercy of algorithms

The hard truth? True ownership isn’t about where you post—it’s about what you own.
Not a profile. Not an account. Intellectual assets. Business models. Brand equity.

Because most creators aren’t really chasing independence. They just want better bosses.

The ones who break free?
✅ Use platforms but don’t rely on them.
✅ Own the audience relationship, not just engagement metrics.
✅ Monetize through owned assets, not algorithmic favors.

The real exit strategy?
Stop being a digital tenant. Start becoming an intellectual landlord.

Become a better boss for yourself.

(Writing this piece has taken me upwards of 33 hours, from all the research to making sense of things and putting it up in a slightly easy-to-digest format.
So for some reason, if you decide to share this piece of content with others on social, it’ll be appreciated (and won’t go unnoticed, so thank you).

Sudhanshu Pai

Sudhanshu Pai is the writer of THE INFO CREATOR DEPT. He spends his days researching knowledge business, creators economy, why & how 7 fig info business scale (or flop) and generally figuring out how top creator educators to help others get higher return on their expertise.

The deep dives and other content take more than 100 hours to put together, so sharing this content with others on social media will be much appreciated (and won’t go unnoticed.)

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